The Charge

Ten years ago, he changed the face of Halloween. Tonight, he's back.

Opening Statement

John Carpenter's Halloween is
rightfully considered one of the best horror movies ever made, essentially
giving rise to the whole genre of slasher movies that ruled the 1980s. Not
surprisingly, it quickly became a franchise fraught with very uneven returns.
After Universal and director Tommy Lee Wallace struck out with Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the
only sequel in the series that tried to shake up the formula and leave Michael
Myers out of it completely, the rights to the series went exclusively to
producer Moustapha Akkad, who insisted that the masked killer be brought back in
the next sequel. So, six years after Halloween III, the franchise was
revived with 1988's Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.

Now, the fourth movie in the series makes its Blu-ray debut courtesy of
Anchor Bay.

Facts of the Case

It has been nearly a decade since an explosion at the end of Halloween II was thought to have
killed everyone's favorite masked killer (not named Jason or Leatherface),
Michael Myers. Surprise! He isn't dead, just comatose. The artist formerly known
as The Shape wakes from his coma and escapes from a sanitarium, heading off to
Haddonfield, Illinois, to kill the niece, Jamie (Danielle Harris, Hatchet II), that he never knew he had. In
pursuit of Michael, as always, is Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance, Escape from New York), who also
survived the explosion.

It's Halloween night. Michael Myers is back. This is not going to go well
for the people of Haddonfield.

The Evidence

Though the opinion is likely going to make me unpopular among horror movie
geeks and Halloween enthusiasts,
I've long held the belief that Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
is the very best of all the Halloween sequels. Yes, better than the
Carpenter-scripted Halloween II.
Better than the insane Halloween III:
Season of the Witch. Better even than Halloween H20.

It's a movie that has actually gotten better with time, when the smoke of
the '80s cleared and it became evident that Halloween 4 is something
different. While the second and third movies in the franchise revel in the
mean-spirited excess that defined so much of '80s horror, Halloween 4 is
the closest in spirit to John Carpenter's original movie. It finally recaptures
the atmosphere of October in the Midwest—from the wardrobes to the streets
lined with kids trick or treating to the color of the sky, it actually feels
like Halloween. Though director Dwight H. Little totally lacks Carpenter's
talent for generating suspense, Halloween 4 at least dials back on the
outlandish gore that characterized its two predecessors. One over-the-top kill
early on aside, The Return of Michael Myers is positively subdued in the
violence department. That may put some viewers off, who tune into horror movies
to revel in the red stuff, but not every horror movie needs to ratchet up
the kill count. Halloween 4 tries to bring a little class back to the
series.

But what really makes Halloween 4 stand out—and what aligns it
more with the original than the other sequels—is in the way it treats its
characters. Unlike most '80s slashers, there isn't anyone in this movie that's
outright bad or stupid. Ellie Cornell, as Jamie's foster sister Rachel, is the
series' best protagonist since Jamie Lee Curtis: she's a smart, believable
teenager with a life that exists before a masked killer shows up. Danielle
Harris, in the role that would ultimately turn her into a modern-day Scream
Queen, is a pretty great movie kid. She's not snotty or wise beyond her years.
She's believable and scared, and the relationship between her and Rachel gives
the movie a heart at its center. It's rare that we actually care about the
characters in '80s slasher movies—even the final girl(s). Halloween
4 is one of the exceptions. The movie's care for its cast extends beyond
just the two leads, too. Consider Sasha Jenson, as Rachel's philandering
boyfriend. Normally, he'd be played as another insensitive prick. He's not. He's
a teenage boy who screws up, but who sort of means well. He tries to do the
right thing. When the time comes, he tries to save lives. Like most of the
characters in the movie, who rarely behave as stupidly as in most genre efforts
(they even try to call the cops!), he isn't just fodder for Michael Myers'
instruments of death. He's an actual person, and that gives the movie some
stakes.

This being the fourth movie in a franchise of eight entries (plus a remake
and its sequel), it's not without its problems. It's great to have Donald
Pleasance back, but he seems to be acting in a different movie. There are
subplots that don't work, like the group of rednecks that decide they're going
to take their truck out and hunt Michael Myers down themselves (Surprise! It
does not go well). The movie also has a left-field ending that recalls the
opening of the first movie as well as the last scene in Friday the 13th: The Final
Chapter; as a standalone sequence, it's nonsensical but fine. The bigger
problem is where it fits in with the overall continuity of the series—and
by that I mean that the series really has no actual continuity.

Anchor Bay's new Blu-ray of Halloween 4 is easily the best the movie
has ever looked. The best change is that the 1.85:1 widescreen image has finally
been properly color timed, restoring the attempt by Little and DP Peter Lyons
Collister to approximate the look the original movie. Everything about this new
transfer is richer and warmer, with good detail throughout and a nice, film-like
appearance. Some of the black levels are a little bit shallow, which is
problematic because of how dark a lot of the sequences are, but it's not a deal
breaker. The 5.1 TrueHD audio track is more disappointing, making little use of
the dimensional possibilities and rarely giving enough kick to create scares.
It's all rather flat and uninspired.

The good news about this Blu-ray release is that it gets an all-new audio
commentary from director Dwight H. Little and moderator Justin Beahm of
halloweenmovies.com and the forthcoming book Halloween: The Complete
Authorized History. Their talk is informative and occasionally thoughtful,
filled with production details and explanations of where the movie fits within
the overall series. The bad news is that a number of bonus features from the
previous Divimax special edition DVD have been lost in the move to high def. The
commentary with stars Ellie Cornell and Danielle Harris has been ported over,
but a second commentary, featuring writer Alan B. McElroy and Anthony Massey, is
nowhere to be found. Also missing is that disc's very good "Final Cut"
featurette. A 20-minute panel discussion from the 25th anniversary convention
was carried over, as has the movie's original trailer (presented, for some
reason, in standard def). There's no rhyme or reason to what survived the move
to Blu-ray and what was dropped, and that's incredibly frustrating. I'm all for
the inclusion of a new commentary, but it shouldn't have come at the expense of
the other existing bonus features. Anchor Bay kind of blew it in that
department.

Closing Statement

I'm a big fan of Halloween 4, so I'm happy to see the movie get a
Blu-ray release. I have no idea why some of the previous bonus features were
carried over while others were lost, but it means that fans of Halloween
4 may want to hang onto their DVDs. The quality of the movie and the A/V
upgrade make this Blu-ray worth owning, but now fans will be stuck owning two
copies of the film. This should have been the definitive release. It isn't.

The Verdict

A frustrating disc, an underrated movie.

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